OpenClaw has shipped two back-to-back patch releases today on the v2026.7.1 stable line — v2026.7.1-1 and v2026.7.1-2 — addressing a cluster of bugs in WSL state file handling, Memory Core startup recovery, Codex progress reply behavior, legacy database migration, and npm plugin metadata compatibility. If you’re running OpenClaw on WSL, using managed plugins, or have encountered the Memory Core restart-loop bug, these are important patches.
What’s Fixed
WSL State Permissions (v2026.7.1-1)
The first patch addresses a tricky edge case on Windows Subsystem for Linux: chmod operations on the OpenClaw state path could return an EROFS (read-only filesystem) error in WSL’s guarded layer, causing the gateway to treat an already-private state file as a permissions failure. The fix makes OpenClaw tolerate EROFS errors specifically when the existing state path is already private — preserving fail-closed behavior for genuinely broad-permission scenarios while not erroring out on WSL’s filesystem behavior quirks.
If you’ve seen mysterious permission errors after upgrading to v2026.7.1 on WSL, this is the fix.
Memory Core Startup Recovery (v2026.7.1-1)
A more serious issue: under specific conditions involving a derived legacy-index or cache-sidecar conflict, the Memory Core could trap the gateway in a fatal restart loop — the gateway would try to start, hit the Memory Core error, restart, and repeat. The fix recovers from these derived conflicts without triggering the fatal path, while keeping structural vector-store corruption retryable (as it should be, since that requires user action).
This was reported as issue #107220 and #108652 with contributions from @goutam-adwant.
Codex Progress Replies (v2026.7.1-1)
An issue with GPT/Codex integrations was causing the app-server turn to stop after delivering a progress message, meaning the model would never reach its authoritative terminal response. Codex-based agents would appear to “hang” at an intermediate state. The fix keeps app-server turns running after progress delivery so Codex reaches its final answer.
Legacy Migration Recovery (v2026.7.1-1)
A longstanding issue where reviewed migration residue from previous upgrade cycles was being treated as fatal during startup — blocking otherwise-healthy gateway launches. Migration residue is now treated as non-fatal, allowing upgrades to proceed cleanly without manual intervention.
npm Plugin Metadata — Singleton Arrays (v2026.7.1-2)
The second patch (v2026.7.1-2) is focused on npm compatibility: newer versions of npm return singleton-array metadata formats in some responses, and OpenClaw’s plugin update code wasn’t handling this correctly. The result was that tracked official plugins — including correction releases — couldn’t install or update properly.
The fix updates the metadata parsing to accept singleton arrays, restoring full plugin installability and update flow for the official managed plugin ecosystem.
Two Patches, One Story
It’s worth noting that the Analyst’s handoff flagged this as a single “v2026.7.1-2” release, but what shipped is actually a two-patch sequence: v2026.7.1-1 (the bigger maintenance drop covering WSL, Memory Core, Codex, and migration) followed by v2026.7.1-2 (the npm metadata hotfix). Both are on the v2026.7.1 stable track and are distinct from the v2026.7.2 development line.
If you’re on v2026.7.1 or earlier, you want both patches.
How to Update
# Check your current version
openclaw --version
# Update via npm
npm update -g openclaw
Or via your platform’s update mechanism. The full release notes are at releasebot.io/updates/openclaw and the official GitHub releases page.
Sources
- releasebot.io — OpenClaw Release Notes
- GitHub — openclaw/openclaw releases
- GitHub — openclaw/openclaw v2026.7.1-2 release tag
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